TOWER GROVE — The accepted halfway spot of the Major League Baseball season is the midsummer classic, the All-Star Game, but for the St. Louis Cardinals the mathematical midpoint of the year came sometime during the flight to Cincinnati on Thursday night.

The Cardinals are the first National League team to complete 81 games, and they arrive at Game No. 82 tonight at Great American Ball Park in a virtual tie for the lead in the…

CHESTERFIELD — Manager Tony La Russa remembers how the pitcher looked in at the catcher, the distinctive and dogged look of a confrontation that was going to decide the game. It was a pivotal moment in one of the finest complete-game performances La Russa has ever seen. It left him gobsmacked.

“A classic bit of pitching,” he said in his office Thursday night.

And he could have been talking about Chris Carpenter’s nine-inning gem against the Cincinnati…

TOWER GROVE — The arbitration wallop the St. Louis Cardinals have been bracing for this winter came into view Tuesday with the exchange of salary figures around baseball. The Cardinals two unsigned and eligible players, outfielders Rick Ankiel and Ryan Ludwick, each are guaranteed to receive significant raises. The salaries that an arbitrator will choose between — if the two sides do indeed get to a hearing, that is — are there for everyone to…

LAS VEGAS — In their past 420 games, a stretch that reaches all the way back deep into that golden season of 2006, the St. Louis Cardinals have had a grand total of ZERO games started and won by a lefthanded pitcher.

Since Mark Mulder won his start on June 15, 2006, the Cardinals have trotted out Mike Maroth, Randy Keisler, Jaime Garcia and Mulder (a few times) to make starts. That group has made 15 starts total…

TOWER GROVE — With the subtraction of the salaries for Mark Mulder, Braden Looper, Scott Spiezio, Juan Encarnacion and Jason Isringhausen (though possibly only briefly for him), the St. Louis Cardinals have a raw total of about $29 million in expiring contracts from their 2008 payroll. But presented with the question on whether the Cardinals had $25 million to even $30 million of flexibility for the coming season, an organization official was direct with his answer:

“You might…

TOWER GROVE — For the St. Louis Cardinals, there is a bemusing whiff of irony to the Oakland Athletics deal for Colorado outfielder Matt Holliday that goes beyond the Cardinals’ interest in landing the All-Star outfielder from the Rockies.

Get this: The Cardinals helped provide the A’s with players used to complete the deal.

No joke. It all started way back in the winter before 2005 …

Cardinals general manager Walt Jocketty wanted to hoist his pennant-winning team to…

TOWER GROVE — While reading the coverage of the deal sending Colorado Rockies outfielder and recent Cardinals-target Matt Holliday to Oakland — from the news of the trade, to the players headed to Denver, to Drew Litton’s cartoon — one thing stands out.

There isn’t a Ryan Ludwick in the bunch.

Any time there is a deal of this nature, especially one that we know the St. Louis Cardinals were interested/involved in, it offers up an opportunity to truly…

SOUTH GRAND — Ryan Howard, pride of Lafayette High, home-run king and challenger for the National League MVP award, you just helped hoist the Philadelphia Phillies to their first World Series championship in 28 years. What are you going to do next?

“I’m going to …”

Arbitration?

In the afterglow of Philadelphia’s first major professional world championship in a generation, it is clear that the Phillies could begin defense of their World Series title in arbitration hearings.

Two pillars…

SOUTH GRAND — Would have had the weekly PostCards posted much earlier this morning if the first question — from the sharp, witty and ever-adept keyboard of regular Frank Fuhrig, of course — had not been as much a homework assignment as a question.

It’s written less for a mailbag and more for a syllabus.

One element of the St. Louis Cardinals’ interest/chances in landing San Diego ace Jake Peavy is the amount of money the Cardinals…

TOWER GROVE — There were times during his endless rehab from relentless shoulder trouble that Mark Mulder pitched well enough to get through innings, to get by batters. But, he said there was never a moment, not in his final two seasons as a Cardinal, that he was certain he could pitch effectively.

“It was a tough situation … The whole time, all the way through the rehab and making those starts, I was not sure…

SOUTH GRAND — So much of what the Cardinals consider doing and end up doing this offseason to improve their roster will be watched and judged through the Chris Carpenter prism.

When Carpenter is healthy, so are the Cardinals’ chances.

When he is not … Well, that is the question presented to the Cardinals this season as they choose whether they will build a team on the hope that Carpenter won’t be limited by the nettlesome nerves…

TOWER GROVE - The bountiful stats Ryan Ludwick put up this season, the career-high wins for pitchers like Kyle Lohse and even the radar readouts from rookie Jason Motte – as big as those numbers were, the digits that continue to define the Cardinals 2008 season are these: 31.

Everyone knows what that number is.

The first question of the Return of PostCards forces us to discuss what that number means. The Cardinals blew 31 saves this…

TOWER GROVE — In hindsight, the Cardinals have realized they based a lot of their expectations of success in 2008, particularly when it came to pitching, on hope.

Hope was inconsistent, at best, and was recently diagnosed with impingement.

The Cardinals expected no fewer than three starting pitchers to return from serious injuries and contribute — at least one in a significant way — to the 2008 team. From Mark Mulder (shoulder), Matt Clement (shoulder) and Chris Carpenter (elbow,…

TOWER GROVE — It doesn’t take much more than a box score or a glance at the season-ending statistics to know that if the Cardinals reduced their late-inning drama — some would say trauma — they are in contention until the final week, if not having a workout day today.

When it came to finishing games, the Cardinals reed relief this offseason.

In this, the 601st post at Bird Land since the re-design,  we begin a season…

PITTSBURGH — Cardinals lefthander Mark Mulder, searching for the answers that may mean the future of his career, had an exam with Cardinals medical officials Friday, and he will be sent for a second opinion Monday, team officials said.

Mulder got 16 pitches into his return as a starter before his twice repaired shoulder gave way on him and he had to leave Wednesday’s game before collecting a second out in the first inning. The lefthander…